Vintage plane crashes in Swiss Alps, killing all 20 on board

Some of Ju-Air’s Ju-52 aircraft are shown in an undated photo. A fully booked plane crashed about 50 minutes after taking off from an airfield in Locarno.

Some of Ju-Air’s Ju-52 aircraft are shown in an undated photo. A fully booked plane crashed about 50 minutes after taking off from an airfield in Locarno.

Photo: Ju-Air / Keystone

Photo: Ju-Air / Keystone

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Some of Ju-Air’s Ju-52 aircraft are shown in an undated photo. A fully booked plane crashed about 50 minutes after taking off from an airfield in Locarno.

Some of Ju-Air’s Ju-52 aircraft are shown in an undated photo. A fully booked plane crashed about 50 minutes after taking off from an airfield in Locarno.

Photo: Ju-Air / Keystone

Vintage plane crashes in Swiss Alps, killing all 20 on board

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Determining why a vintage plane crashed in the Swiss Alps will be challenging since the 79-year-old aircraft did not have black boxes and was traveling in an area without frequent radar readings when it plunged into a mountain, killing all 20 of the people on board, investigators said Sunday.

The Junkers Ju-52 plane, operated by Swiss company Ju-Air, plunged at a near-vertical angle before it hit the Piz Segnas mountain while carrying 17 passengers and three crew members, police and the head of the country’s transportation safety agency said.

The victims were 11 men and nine women ranging in age from 42 to 84 — seven couples from various parts of Switzerland, a couple from neighboring Austria and their son, and the three crew members. Their names were not released.

The fully booked propeller plane, built in 1939 and retired by Switzerland’s air force in 1981, was flying the passengers back to its base at Duebendorf, near Zurich, from a two-day trip to the Italian-speaking Ticino region. It crashed shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday, less than 50 minutes after taking off from Locarno’s Magadino airfield.

The plane had two pilots. Police said they have not found any evidence a distress call was made before it crashed.

Photos released by Graubuenden canton police showed the crumpled wreckage of the plane lying on the mountain located above the Alpine resort of Flims. Only its upside-down tail appeared more or less intact.

“We can assume that the aircraft hit the ground near-vertically and at relatively high speed,” Daniel Knecht of the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board said Sunday at a news conference in Flims.

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He and senior police official Andreas Tobler said the Ju-52, an early passenger plane that was enlisted for military transport duty during World War II, lacked “black boxes,” the crash-resistant cockpit voice and data recorders that more modern aircraft have.

Officials expect the investigation of the cause to be “relatively complex, because we have to compare various indications, information and evidence and evaluate them,” Knecht said.

There also are typically few radar recordings in mountainous areas such as the one where the crash site is located, he added.

Officials can essentially rule out a collision with another aircraft or an obstacle such as a wire, Knecht said. There also was no indication of any “external influence,” he said, indicating that authorities don’t suspect foul play.

The plane did not catch on fire before it hit the mountain, and investigators have not found any signs the aircraft lost parts or broke up in the air before the crash, Knecht said.

Knecht dismissed the idea that the plane’s age was necessarily a problem. “Older planes, if they are correctly maintained, can be operated safely,” he said.

Nearly 5,000 Ju-52 planes, a product of Germany’s Junkers, were manufactured from 1932 to 1952.

Ju-Air started operating flights with the vintage prop planes in 1983. The company offers “adventure flights” for people wanting to experience Switzerland’s landscape from vintage planes. Its website listed the cost of the 2-day Locarno trip as 1,130 francs ($1,136), including meals and a night in a hotel.